Five Wives

by Joan Thomas

  Don’t confuse a two-way radio with a telephone—that’s a lesson Marj learned the hard way her first year in Shell Mera.

  OLIVE AND PETER are finally moving to Shandia after months of language study. They’re slated to stay with Marj and Nate for three or four days while they sort out their gear. But yesterday Olive ended up in the hospital in Quito. They talked about postponing the move, but when she was discharged, they couldn’t go back to the guesthouse because Helen had given their room away. Helen was the one who suggested they come to Shell Mera anyway, that they fly instead of taking the bus. She thought it would be a good place for Olive to recuperate, with Marj being a nurse.

  Olive sits on the veranda all afternoon, pale but resolute. Marj, who only met her once before, sees that she is not the sort of girl to make a fuss about things, she is not a girl who will use her troubles to get sympathy. She plays Parcheesi with Debbie and braids her hair. They spy a narrow strip of lawn moving like a green river and call Marj out to see. A phalanx of ants, stretching from the road to a cave opening at the foot of the kapok tree. Hundreds of thousands of them, each with its little flag of green.

  “Leafcutter ants,” Marj says. They must have a practical reason for stashing all those leaves underground, but they always look brave and obedient and somehow deluded to Marj.

  “I wonder if Shandia has ants like this?”

  “No question. If you’re short of protein, you can eat them. The Indians do.”

  Emotions flicker on Olive’s face, as if her feelings are all dialed up. She’s not beautiful in a conventional way, but she’s lovely all the same, with her dark eyes and eyebrows and her fair hair. Marj’s mother was firmly against beauty, the way it made girls vain and then faded, leaving them with nothing. But surely, Marj thinks as she goes back to the kitchen, a mother could rejoice in some middle ground.

  Nate is home now, he and Pete are out by the hangar. Perfecta appears on the path from the dock. She’s managed to buy a lovely three-pound trout and Marj chops up four or five tamarillos to spread over it while it bakes. She never knows what to do with tamarillos. She’ll call this trucha con salsa. She puts rice to cook and makes a salad with avocado. Olive comes in and offers to set the table. She moves slowly, lining the cutlery up precisely. Marj feels slow herself, weighed down by the fight she had with Nate. Soon it will be bedtime and they’ll talk.

  But after supper, after she’s gotten the kids to sleep, Peter comes down the stairs and says, “I wonder, would you mind sitting with Olive for a while? She’s quite upset.”

  Olive is lying on the bed crying like there’s no tomorrow, trying to muffle the noise with a pillow. It’s stifling in their room, as though her sorrow has clogged the air. Marj goes to the window and opens it wide. She sits on the edge of the bed and puts her arm around Olive.

  “I miss my mother,” Olive says when she can finally talk. This is her second miscarriage; she lost a baby at Christmas.

  “Oh, my poor girl,” Marj says. “I’m sure you do. Did you manage to phone her?”

  “No, I didn’t call. I never told them we were expecting. It would only have worried them. I’m their only kid, I am all they think about.” Olive lifts herself up on one elbow and digs in the pocket of her skirt for her hanky. “I feel bad about causing so much trouble. Peter and Jim wanted to be single missionaries. They should have stuck with their plan.”

  “You didn’t force Peter to marry you.”

  “Oh, maybe I did by some kind of telepathy. I just wouldn’t let it go.” Her voice is a little hoarse from all the crying.

  “Let me tell you, I know what Pete was like before you got here. I can’t believe he ever thought he could get along without you.”

  Olive gazes at her gratefully and then her shoulders start to shake and she presses her face back into the pillow. “You know what?” she says when she comes up for air. “I’m sort of glad this happened. I’ve been to Shandia and I’m scared to death of living there. How would I have managed in that hut with a tiny baby? And so, if you want the truth, I’m glad!” She is overtaken with sobs again. “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” she cries.

  Marj leans over Olive and strokes her hair. “Olive. Are you having pain?”

  “No. No, it just hurts so much. Here.” She touches her heart. “I wish I hadn’t said that. I didn’t even know I was thinking it until I said it out loud.”

  “Olive, darling. It’s totally natural. And having to go through this twice, well, it’s heartbreaking.”

  “The first time wasn’t this hard. I didn’t realize I was pregnant until it happened. My body felt different, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was just, you know, all that loving.”

  She manages a smile, and just then the generator goes off and the light goes out. The tumult of the forest fills the sudden quiet. “Daddy turned the jungle on,” Marj and the kids always say. Olive slides over on the bed and Marj stretches out beside her. Her own cramps are gone, but she feels as if her limbs are made of cement and it’s a huge relief to lie down.

  “Pete confided in us when he proposed to you,” she says. “And we were all so excited when you wrote back to say yes.”

  Olive emits a little breath of pleasure. She lifts her left hand and looks at her rings in the dark.

  “It must have been strange for you to be apart for your engagement.”

  “It was. It was really strange. Pete’s dad came to the door one day and asked me to go for a drive. He said, ‘I am under strict instructions from my son,’ and he took me to a jewellery store. Pete had money from when his mother died, and he told his dad I was to have whichever ring I wanted.” She doesn’t strike Marj as a talkative girl, but her words come out in a rush. “I had no idea how much money there was and I was too shy to ask, so I picked out the ring I liked best from the tray with the smaller diamonds. The big ones didn’t appeal to me anyway. And then afterwards, we were sitting in the car and Mr. Fleming swivelled around, and I had this awful feeling he was going to put the ring on my finger and even try to kiss me—like, give me the kiss Peter had sent for me. So I reached over and took the box and put the ring on myself ! It was kind of a funny moment.”

  Marj feels pressed into the mattress by the weight of her breasts. The left one has a hot, hard patch above the nipple and she reaches up and starts to massage it gently, because she can’t deal with another bout of mastitis. “You were, what, twenty?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “I was twenty-three when we got married and twenty-five when we came to Ecuador. But I still felt like a kid. And then . . . well, you have to grow up fast on the mission field.”

  “Pete leaving the way he did—I kind of grew up then. I don’t see life the same way now. I used to think he was perfect, for one thing. It’s probably a good thing I got over that.” Her voice is not childish exactly, but it’s soft and light, and she speaks with the west coast accent that always sounds citified to Marj. “He had no idea what to do when this happened last Christmas. He’s been better this time.”

  The moon is almost full and the light from the night sky has seeped into the room, showing everything up in tones of silver and grey. Olive and Peter’s clothes are arranged on hangers (hangers!) along the row of hooks and their suitcases are stacked on the bench, both of their sun hats on top. They’re a tidy pair. Marj’s thoughts drift down to the mess in the kitchen, to the children. The baby will be halfway through his first heavy sleep, he’ll be starting to dream about her.

  “It is very hard to lose a baby, let alone two,” she says. “But you’re right, having children on the mission field is not easy either. Schooling is a big problem. We’re facing that in a few weeks with Debbie. Am I going to send my six-year-old on her own to boarding school in Quito? Nate and I are on different sides of that question. And honestly, as hard as it is to face a miscarriage, I think you should treasure this time on your own with your husband. You have the privilege of working closely together. You have a very special calling. My work is interesting,
meeting missionaries from all over. But you will be winning souls for Christ.”

  “Souls,” Olive says in her soft voice. “Exactly what are they? That’s what I wonder. Did the baby I lost on Tuesday have one?”

  Marj is shocked into silence. They’re on their backs staring up at the mosquito net tied into a huge knot above them, and Olive is very still beside her. Finally Marj says, “That’s the sort of question only a theologian can answer. Why don’t you talk it over with Jim?”

  Olive lets out a little snort. “When Jim talks, I see his mouth move, but I don’t understand a word he’s saying.”

  Marj has to suppress a laugh. It’s always bugged her, the way Jim Elliot goes on, although she has never before encountered anyone who didn’t revere him. “Well, Pete, then,” she says. “You and Pete will be a huge comfort to each other.”

  She has no idea if that is true. At supper Peter was pretty much silent. No doubt he’s finding this hard, though Marj sensed that the quiet at the table was mainly out of respect for Olive and her misery. How much of the family burden do men ever carry? They couldn’t carry it and do what they do. She’s pretty sure that, in spite of their decorum at supper, Pete and Nate will by now have given in to temptation: they’ll be sitting in the dark, drinking Pepsi and trading stories about the Auca Indians.

  IN THE NIGHT, Nate turns on the bedside lamp and drags her up out of a deep well of sleep. David is wailing against his shoulder.

  “Holy cow,” Marj moans, shielding her eyes. “This has got to end. I’m going to start putting Tabasco on my boobies.” She shrugs herself up against the pillow. “This is newborn behaviour. He will take a few swallows and then he’ll fall right back to sleep.”

  Nate hands the baby to her and lies down himself, facing in the other direction. He’s never liked to watch her nurse. He’ll be back snoring again in two minutes if she doesn’t talk fast.

  “Listen, Nate,” she says as she pulls down her nightgown and gets David settled. “I’m sorry we didn’t get time together before bed. I had to go and sit with Olive. She’s really taking it hard, poor kid. And then I had to set the bread for tomorrow, we were down to one loaf. But I wanted to talk—I thought all day about what you said. I know this is a big thing to you. But you have to listen to me. Nate. Nate.”

  Sometimes she misses his plaster cast; she could rap on it with her knuckles to get his attention. Finally he rolls over.

  “Nate, I am in quicksand up to my knees and sinking fast. If I keep very calm and focused, we will maybe survive until these kids are all out of diapers. But we can’t take on a whole new ministry.”

  It was Tuesday he spied the huts. He’s been looking for years, just out of curiosity, criss-crossing the territory south of the Napo any time he had spare fuel on his flight home. He’s seen abandoned houses several times, because the Auca apparently move around a lot. But the day before yesterday he located an inhabited settlement for the first time. Beside a little stream an hour’s walk north of the Curaray, hidden away in dense forest. First he spied a yucca plantation, a chagra, big and well tended. Just past the chagra he saw four palm-leaf longhouses, spaced out among the trees. And he saw people on the paths between the houses. He took a good look and noted the coordinates and then turned around and flew back to Shandia to tell Jim and Betty. Marj is hurt about that part of it, although she’s not going to say so. She can feel Nate’s excitement, still as strong as yesterday. It’s like having a stranger in their bed, preventing them from talking frankly.

  Nate folds his pillow so he can lie on his side and watch her face. “There’s nothing for you to take on,” he says. “This won’t make a single difference to your work. We’ll just start a campaign of gift drops, get them interested, let them know we’re friendly. That’s all it is.”

  “That’s all for now, but eventually you will want to go in.”

  He shakes this off.

  “Nate. Of course you will. Otherwise, what’s the point? Remember what it was like for us when you crashed? When you sent out that distress signal and then went dead? You give me one more shock like that and it will finish me altogether. Nate.” She waits until his eyes focus on her again. “Honey, I am really tired.”

  He reaches over and cups her forehead gently. “Eagle wings,” he says. That’s his shorthand for: Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

  “That verse has a lot more to do with you than it does with me,” Marj says.

  David is already asleep, as she predicted. Nate notices, and gets out of bed, reaching down for him. When he straightens up, she sees the length of the baby’s body against his, and it shocks her. That is all her. Every molecule of that child’s body came from hers. “Thank you, honey,” she says when Nate comes back. It’s kind of him to get up with David, he almost never does it, but he hasn’t changed his diaper, and the clammy mess between David’s legs will wake him up extra-early and quite possibly leave him with diaper rash. So really, how much help is it?

  He turns off the lamp and crawls into bed. As her eyes adjust to the dark, she makes out the thrilling angle of his shoulder. Prudently, she shifts over on the bed, leaving a safe zone between them. Oh! The tireder she gets, the more she wants him—it’s nuts. She’s turning into nothing but a body, the rest of her is shutting down. That’s what having babies and nursing babies year after year does to you. Her hunger for Nate and its astonishing satisfactions—it’s the sort of thing she would have thought belonged to the worldly and the unsaved, who live to be intoxicated. Or at least to women who are sexier-looking than she is, women who would be a natural match for Nate. But it turns out it doesn’t matter. Rhythm, speed, steadiness, guts—that’s what Nate cares about. He throws something her way, throws it hard and fast, and deftly she catches it.

  “Nate, I hate to let you down,” she says.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “I hate to let you down, but I really don’t get it. All we do, your huge circuit, and the way you maintain the plane and the generators, and the things you invent, and keeping all those missionaries safe, and building the clinic and hospital—it’s more than enough.”

  He rolls onto his back and lies staring upwards. “The priest, when he was here today—did he talk about Rachel? Did he say what she’s up to?”

  “Rachel? How would he know anything about Rachel?”

  “He’s been going in to the hacienda. Jim told me. He hikes in every month to work with Don Carlos’s campesinos. To pull teeth and say Mass or whatever he does. He might know if she’s making any progress.”

  In the dim light, Marj stares at Nate with sudden understanding. “This is about Rachel.”

  He makes a dismissive noise in the back of his throat and lays an arm over his eyes.

  But it is! It’s about Rachel, who walked around the house for months crowing about the glory of her mission, constantly singing, “Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown, when at evening the sun goeth down?” Before Rachel came, the Auca were just a galvanizing rumour. Then she took off for the hacienda, and someone happened to mention that Don Carlos had an Auca woman living there, and Nate asked Don Carlos what Rachel was doing, and he said she was learning the Auca language from the woman, and then Jim said Rachel had more or less confided in him that she felt called to reach the Auca, and they would joke about her walking into the forest and ending up in a stewpot. Through the months, Nate has more than once mused about Rachel’s progress, wondering how fluent she’ll be by now, and whether she’ll have a plan for making contact. And now he’s spied the houses, and he sees a chance to scoop her.

  Marj raises herself up on one elbow and studies Nate. The day Rachel with no advance notice climbed off the Quito bus (this was months ago, before David was born), Marj instinctively put her in an upstairs room as far away from them as possible. And a good thing, because when they went to bed, Nate couldn’t contain himself. “Why is sh
e here? Why is she here?” He kept putting this to Marj as a serious question, as if she should know. “First she follows me to South America, and then she follows me here. I don’t want her in the house.”

  “Whatever did she do to make you feel that way?”

  Then he told her things she had never heard before about his childhood, the years when their parents were so often away, when she ran the house like a tyrant.

  “She was mean to you.”

  “Yeah, she was mean. Of course she was mean. Dad had one of those leather straps teachers use, and she strapped us with that. Morning, noon, and night. But it wasn’t even that. Probably we deserved the lickings. It was more . . . Well, I don’t know, Marj. I see the way you are with the kids, and she was not like that.”

  “But she wasn’t your mother. She was only a kid herself, left with all that responsibility. It’s your mother you should be mad at.”

  “I hardly know my mother. Rachel was our mother. She was more than our mother, she was like our king. We had to obey her every command. And we were so poor. We couldn’t heat the house properly, we were never warm. I had terrible chilblains, I had pneumonia half the time. We were hungry! She was getting money from our grandparents and not buying food with it.”

  “She was spending it on herself ?”

  “No, not even that. One day Ben found dollar bills half-burned in the stove. It was like our real problems weren’t big enough, she wanted this drama where we were suffering and starving, like children in a fairy tale. So she could have more power over us. Or so she would look like some sort of martyr to everybody in the town.”

  It was hard to believe. Rachel didn’t strike Marj as having much flair for drama, or caring a lot what people thought of her. And this story was crazy. Rachel’s eyes were as pale and strange as a husky dog’s, but she didn’t seem insane, just lonely, overbearing, and with very little talent for getting people to like her. But who knows? Marj was always baffled when she peered down into the weird old stage set of Nate’s childhood, at a family both highfalutin and impoverished, like banished heirs to a throne, full of culture and full of its opposite, strange to a degree she was only gradually discovering.